Mirror Image
by more-than-words
Summary: Elizabeth and Henry's evening after they get home following the capture of their stalker. Set at the end of 3.05, The French Revolution.


I sat down to write some fluff but I accidentally wrote this instead. It's just a little bit of post-stalker exploration/emotion/comfort/smut(ish), set at the end of 3.05, The French Revolution. Please let me know what you think! x

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 **Mirror Image**

It was over. It was finally over. Their stalker had been caught.

It didn't yet feel entirely real, even as Elizabeth felt lighter than she had in weeks and able for the first time in a long while to simply enjoy being in her house without the worry of what might be about to happen.

She stood for a moment in front of the bathroom mirror, smoothing her hands over her hips to erase a crease in the black silk slip she had changed into after arriving home from the state dinner, the fabric sliding coolly over her skin and causing her nerves to tingle. Elizabeth lifted one hand to rub away a small lipstick smear from her mouth where it had been smudged by Henry's kisses, and smiled as she remembered the way her husband had held her during the car ride home, his movements filled with happiness and relief and a lightness that hadn't been there for a while.

Her thoughts started to drift into memory, her vision losing focus as she recalled how Henry had walked her backwards into the house, his arms securely around her and his lips pressed to hers as they slowly made their way upstairs. She had left him in the bedroom a few minutes ago so she could change her clothes and get ready for their… celebration… and she felt heat rising within her as she imagined him in the next room doing the same.

There was movement to the left of her and then a hand touched her hip and she jumped, a gasp leaving her throat at the unexpected contact, the low level adrenaline of the past few weeks surging automatically in her veins. Her eyes snapped up to find her reflection in the mirror and saw Henry stood just behind her with an apologetic look on his face.

"Sorry," he said, softly. He found her gaze in the mirror. "I didn't mean to startle you." His hand curved around her hip and his torso rested against her back, pressing her softly into the marble countertop in front of her.

She shook her head to dismiss the apology and gave him a smile imbued with love and a small tremor she couldn't quite hold back. "It's okay. I guess I'm just not quite used to the idea that it's over. I keep wondering what awful thing is going to happen next."

Henry's face tempered into empathy as he nodded in understanding and perhaps agreement. Holding her gaze in the mirror, he lowered his head to press a warm kiss to her cheek. "It's over," he reassured her, with the certainty she wished she felt. "It is."

Elizabeth blinked, feeling the wetness of tears in her eyes, and looked down at the countertop where the containers of the makeup she had put on earlier that evening still lay. The look of love and relief and recently rediscovered security on Henry's face started a discomfiting churn in her gut as she thought that the security should never have left him in the first place. She thought to call the feeling guilt, but that seemed too simple a term. She sucked in a breath and forced herself to look back up at her husband. "Henry, I'm sorry."

Confusion filtered across his features. "For..?" Then he figured it out. He shook his head. "Babe, no. This wasn't your fault. The stalker wasn't your fault."

Sweet man, he looked and sounded like he genuinely believed it. Elizabeth wanted more than anything to buy into his certainty, but was struggling to reconcile it with the culpability she felt and the way Henry had made her feel – intentionally or not – the day they had argued over the stalker while changing the sheets on their bed. She remembered that conversation, when he had been obsessing over Ray Merchant and she had listed for him some of the other folk who were obsessed with her and she had been unable to shake the sense that the reason her family was in danger was because of her.

It was still a hard feeling to shake.

Henry's hand found her arm, smoothing down her bare skin and pulling her gently back against his chest. He had undressed to his boxers and it felt good, so good, to feel his skin against hers and soak in the comfort he offered and she wanted nothing more than to just sink into him, but Elizabeth found herself caught up in processing the complexity of emotion she felt over the stalker who had terrorised their family. She looked back down at the marble, tracing one finger over the cool surface. "It would have been easier if they'd left the kids out of it," she said, and she thought that was the heart of it. If only the bastard hadn't decided to involve the kids. "I mean, if he'd just decided to come after me –"

"Stop." Henry's command was quiet but adamant.

Glancing back up at him, she saw the slow shake of his head and the look in his eyes that told her not to go there, not to play _what if_ now that it was done. She knew that he agreed with her about the children, that it had killed him to think that they might be anything other than completely safe, but no doubt he didn't particularly want to think about her being the sole focus of a mad man's campaign, either.

Nodding in understanding that he didn't need any more unwelcome images in his head, she straightened up, feeling the smooth slip of her silk nightgown against Henry's bare chest. She rested her hand over his where it still curved around the jut of her hip. "I just keep wondering what would have come next," she confessed. "If we hadn't found him, and if I didn't give in, if I didn't quit. I keep wondering what he would have done."

It had taken a lot of her energy to stop herself from wondering too deeply in recent weeks how far things might go. At least those thoughts were now nothing but a slightly altered mirror image of their life, a series of events that thankfully wouldn't ever come to pass.

Henry held her a little tighter. "I know," he said. "Me, too. But we don't have to worry about that anymore. It's done now. It's all over."

Lowering his head again, he pressed kisses to her shoulder and her throat, his body moving softly against hers from behind. Elizabeth let herself relax back into him and watched his movements in the bathroom mirror. She wondered at the change in her husband: throughout their whole ordeal with the stalker, Henry had been visibly affected and barely able to contain his frustration, and there was such a contrast with how he was able now to step up to reassure her, to provide her with confident security so soon after it had all come to an end.

She supposed the difference was that he couldn't control what was happening while their stalker was still out there and their family was under threat, but he could control how he reacted in the aftermath. Henry was a man who stepped up, and Elizabeth knew that it had been killing him that he could do so little to keep their family safe.

No wonder he had been so obsessed with tracking down Ray Merchant.

He kissed his way up her neck before lingering a while on the sensitive spot just behind her ear, sucking on the spot before soothing it with his tongue and pressing a fleeting kiss to the shell of her ear. Then he whispered, "I love you. So much."

A tremulous smile tugged at her lips. "I love you," she replied, feeling overcome with a wave of affection for her husband.

She didn't think she would have made it through the past few weeks without him.

He lifted his head and found her gaze in the mirror once more and Elizabeth could see the weight of what had happened in his eyes. She knew he'd be able to see the exact same thing in hers. Their shared terror was something neither of them would forget in a hurry.

Elizabeth watched in the mirror as Henry's hand skimmed up her arm to the back of her head, sliding into her hair and then tilting her head back so that he could kiss her. She arched her back and rested her head against his shoulder as his tongue slid into her mouth, feeling the slight bite of the edge of the counter against her pelvis. She lifted one hand up and back to tangle into Henry's hair and keep him close, her nails scratching lightly against his scalp in the way that always made him melt.

They were home. They were safe.

That was everything.

Henry kissed her for long, unhurried minutes, until the worst of the lingering fear had gone away, or at least gone into hiding for a time, displaced by a feeling of love and security from having him enveloping her so completely. A warm lust started to glug slowly through her veins. When he drew his mouth away from hers, his lips were swollen and his eyes were dark, and as they both found themselves once more in the bathroom mirror, Elizabeth saw she wore an expression to match.

As Henry skated his hands over her body, his large palms cupping her breasts and feeling their weight before moving on down her stomach and then to her thighs beneath her silk slip, there was just a whisper of remembered fear that still remained, one that she saw in her husband, too, and that she knew would be unlikely to dissipate for a while.

It shimmered there between them, connecting them like a wire as their eyes locked in the mirror and Elizabeth reached one hand back to help Henry lower his boxers. And as he bent his knees and pressed slowly inside of her and started to move, setting her nerve endings on fire, she knew that their shared memory of the past few weeks would be a weight they felt for time to come.

Another secret of the life they shared.

The intimacy of watching their movements in the mirror at the same time as feeling her husband behind her, around her, inside her, made Elizabeth moan and she felt the rumble of Henry's chest against her back as he let out an answering groan and his eyes fell shut as he gave himself over to desire. The fabric of her slip moved over her body, catching at her nipples and sending hot thrills of pleasure through her chest.

The hot thrill of pleasure was not a million miles away from the initial white heat of terror and yet could not have felt more different.

Minutes later, after her body had finished convulsing and Henry had ceased to throb inside her and had slumped hot and boneless against her back, Elizabeth closed her eyes and took in a slow, stabilising breath.

She felt sweat cooling on her skin and her breath shuddered out of her as Henry's hands flexed at her waist. She opened her eyes and looked at her face in the mirror. She found Henry looking back at her and saw everything she was feeling reflected in his eyes. The invisible wire stretched between them.

Elizabeth turned around, away from the mirror, hoping to snap that thin line of fear in two.

"Let's go to bed," she said.

At his answering nod, she led Henry by the hand into the bedroom, closing the bathroom door behind them and shutting away the memory of their stalker to be unpacked and processed properly on a different day.

For now, she just wanted to celebrate being home.


End file.
